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[22]

Some writers say that the first inhabitants of the
country at the foot of Mount Ida were called Idæan Dac-
tyli, for the country below mountains is called the foot, and
the summits of mountains their heads; so the separate extremities of Ida (and all are sacred to the mother of the gods)
are called Idæan Dactyli.1

But Sophocles2 supposes, that the first five were males,
who discovered and forged iron,3 and many other things
which were useful for the purposes of life; that these persons
had five sisters, and from their number had the name of
Dactyli.4 Different persons however relate these fables differently, connecting one uncertainty with another. They
differ both with respect to the numbers and the names of
these persons; some of whom they call Celmis, and Damnameneus, and Hercules, and Acmon, who, according to some
writers, were natives of Ida, according to others, were settlers,
but all agree that they were the first workers in iron, and
upon Mount Ida. All writers suppose them to have been
magicians, attendants upon the mother of the gods, and to have
lived in Phrygia about Mount Ida. They call the Troad
Phrygia, because, after the devastation of Troy, the neighbouring Phrygians became masters of the country. It is also
supposed that the Curetes and the Corybantes were descendants of the Idæan Dactyli, and that they gave the name of
Idæan Dactyli to the first hundred persons who were born in
Crete; that from these descended nine Curetes, each of whom
had ten children, who were called Idæan Dactyli.5

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